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Reheated The Year That Was

The Year Reheated

December 27, 2023 304 Comments

In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

The year began with a tale of oysters and college lesbianism, via Bon Appétit magazine, in which Brooklynite pronoun-stipulator Isha Maratha was keen to overshare. For Ms Maratha, “My first time eating an oyster was an act of queer intimacy.” Indeed, we were told by an obliging editor, “The act of eating an oyster uniquely and intimately expresses her queerness.” And so, we were regaled, at length, with descriptions of mollusc-gobbling, stolen glances, and lemon wedges being squeezed. “There is something uniquely unspoken,” we learned, “between the eater and the eaten.”

We also pondered mass fare-dodging, now at record levels, and its progressive defenders – including those employed to maintain public transport – and whose pre-emptive disapproval of anyone noticing such crimes was remarkable in its vehemence and uniformity. The effects on social trust of a large and growing minority disregarding the law and norms of behaviour, and doing so with a learned impunity, is apparently something one shouldn’t – and mustn’t – register or explore. Because, in the progressive world, noticing habitual and brazen thievery is much worse than indulging in it. And obviously racist.

And we visited the pages of Scientific American, where wokeness is ascendant and thinking simply isn’t done. In particular, an “important analysis” piece in which we were urged – by Tracie Canada, a “socio-cultural anthropologist” at Duke University – to fret about “the violence Black men experience in [American] football,” and in which we were told that the physicality of the sport “disproportionately affects black men.” This was framed to imply, but never establish, some systemic racial wrongdoing – “anti-Black practices” that are “inescapable” – rather than, say, being an unremarkable reflection of the sport’s demographics, in which, at professional levels, black players are a majority. Or to put it another, no less scientific, way – the risk of injury while playing a contact sport disproportionately affects those who actually play it. When this rather glaring logical error was pointed out by readers, the magazine’s editor-in-chief promptly accused said readers of “systemic racism.”

 

In February, we encountered a suboptimal substitute teacher named Lydia Lamere – formerly Christopher Lamere – who spent lesson time directing students to his overtly sexual TikTok account, and conscripting middle-school children into his cross-dressing psychodrama. When not discussing “kink” and preferred sexual positions with other people’s eleven-year-old children, Mr Lamere found time to tells us, “I’m not a predator, I’m just a woman who happens to be super tall and hot.”

Matters academic cropped up again via an eye-widening overview of racial “equity” policies in various schools and institutions, where expectations of competence are deemed racist and terribly problematic. In New York City, for instance, thanks to “disparate impact” policies, firefighters are no longer expected to be able to read the instructions on their own firefighting equipment. Likewise, in scrupulously progressive Ontario, it is now illegal to use a maths test to determine whether maths teachers actually possess the knowledge that they are being paid to convey in class. Such is the world of triumphant wokeness, in which “suspending proficiency requirements” – and denouncing diligence and competence as “white supremacy,” a wickedness to be shunned – will somehow “benefit” the children on whom these things are imposed.

We also marvelled at a contrived and unconvincing display of forgiveness by Guardian contributor Anna Spargo-Ryan, whose home was invaded in the night by a gang of sociopaths armed with carving knives. It turns out that when being robbed by habitual predators, the progressive thing to do is to sympathise with the creatures breaking into one’s home and driving off with one’s stuff in one’s own car. Ms Spargo-Ryan was hailed by her peers as a “beautiful person” for gushing with pretentious sympathy for her assailants and for wishing to see the burglars spared the normal corrective consequences, presumably so that they might go on to burgle the homes of others, including her neighbours. Which of course they were busy doing. Though it occurs to me that a person breaking into someone’s home in the middle of the night and stealing their possessions is sending a pretty strong signal about how much concern, or how little, the rest of us should have for that person’s wellbeing.

 

The Pronoun Game, so very much in fashion, cropped up in March, along with a demand that employers accommodate the made-up identities of insufferable narcissists. Even when those made-up identities can change several times a day, with such changes being signalled via colour-coded pronoun bracelets, pronoun earrings, and other pronoun-stipulating accessories. Accessories that all colleagues would be expected to monitor closely, lest “misgendering” ensue, followed by a visit to Human Resources. A scenario that inspired the question of exactly how much farce in the workplace might be considered excessive.

Thanks to Oxford University’s Department of Biology, we beheld some ostentatious fretting about the “numerous negative consequences” of obscure Latin names that almost no-one knows about. According to Assistant Professor of Conservation Science Ricardo Rocha, some “1,565 species of bird, reptiles, amphibians and mammals” are named after “white, male Europeans from the 19th and 20th centuries,” which is apparently a very bad thing. What with all that whiteness and maleness, you see. This legacy of legwork and exploration is, we’re to believe, oppressing the people of Zimbabwe and Botswana, for whom the Latin textbook names of lizards and beetles are foremost in their minds. We were also assured that would-be botanists and biologists are in some way being psychologically injured by the existence of this Latin taxonomy, and by the fact that much of the “flora of New Caledonia” is “named after a man.”

Oh, and we were treated to the creative efforts of artist, educator and “community organiser” Alex Romania, whose juddering and convulsions were artistically enhanced by twenty-five pounds of powdered cheese. When not “investigating bodies of cultural debris” and being showered with atomised dairy products, Mr Romania teaches those less gifted than himself at New York’s Centre for Performance Research and other places of learning.

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Reading time: 19 min
Written by: David
Free-For-All

Tidings

December 22, 2023 146 Comments

A fox’s first snow, photographed by Tak:

As is the custom here, posting will be intermittent over the holidays and readers are advised to follow me on X / Twitter, or subscribe to the blog feed at the very bottom of the page, either of which will alert you to anything new as and when it materialises.

Thanks for another 1.5 million or so visits this year and thousands of comments, many of which prompted discussions that are much more interesting than the actual posts. Which is pretty much the idea.

And particular thanks to all those who’ve made PayPal, Ko-Fi, or SubscribeStar donations to keep this rickety barge above water. It’s much appreciated. Should you be gripped by an urge to express encouragement via currency, feel free to use the buttons in the sidebar, top right, or above the comments following this post. Just think of my little face lighting up.

Curious newcomers and those with nothing better to do are welcome to rummage through the reheated series in search of entertainment. You may, and probably will, find things you’d missed. And this, needless to say, is an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

To you and yours, a very good one.

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Written by: David
Anthropology Free-For-All Problematic Fitness

G-String Blues

December 19, 2023 115 Comments

Attention, unenlightened beings. You must continue doing the work until you are aroused by the fat, neck-bearded woman:

No one likes a fat go-go dancer, honey. pic.twitter.com/tpMUPjwDj1

— Heidi (@HeidiBriones) December 18, 2023

Now shove that twenty bucks in her G-string, goddammit.

Update, via the comments:

John D adds, not unreasonably,

Isn’t it her job to be attractive?

Little Miss Hairy Neck does seem to be offloading the burden of her chosen profession. Sort of, “You should fancy me regardless of how I look or behave. I shouldn’t have to be a pleasing shape or an agreeable person.” Which, it has to be said, is a big ask. But then, the egalitarian redistribution of erotic interest is a recurring theme of woke rumblings.

Mags, meanwhile, is amused by Lady Neckbeard’s claim of being “really honest” while framing the limited interest in her physique as entirely the fault of other, insufficiently effortful people. A bold move.

Given our oversized go-go dancer’s chosen activities, and her expectation that strangers should want to stuff cash into her knickers, I suspect that our hefty temptress is the one who “still has a lot of work to do.” I mean, it’s not unlike complaining that people aren’t rushing to buy your unattractive, poorly-made furniture. “Yes, the chairs do wobble, and the legs will fall off if you shift your weight even slightly, but people should still want them…”

Oh, and as I’m busy with some last-minute redecorating, open thread.

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (704)

December 15, 2023 124 Comments

Doctor’s note of note. || The designated drivers of yesteryear. || A discussion ensues. || Today’s word is inadvisable. || “Dimples are highly valued.” || 14,000 volts. || It’s a ChapStick warmer. || How progressives destroy empathy. || A project for the weekend. || Interlopers or ingredients? || Going that extra mile. || But she wanted a pink Mercedes. || Today’s other word is parenting. || For readers overseas, a scone pronunciation map. || Excuse me, madam… || I’m not sure that one of them is quite what she claims. || On self-checkout supermarkets. || The Christmas spirit. || When your new neighbour announces he’s a self-satisfied dick. || Dating complications. || Blockage of note. || She does this better than you do. || For fun, I’m told. || And finally, tactile adventures in green screen.

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Academia Problematic Competence The Thrill of Medicine

The Very Best Of Hands

December 11, 2023 81 Comments

Are you Canadian and feeling unwell? Fear not, I bring thrilling news. From Canada’s Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons:

Medical training should centre around “values such as anti-oppression, anti-racism, and social justice, rather than medical expertise,” according to the report, shared in late November by a member of the working group.

This report here.

The interim report recommends “de-centring medical expertise” and instead focusing medical school education on the values of “anti-racism,” “anti-oppression,” “social justice and equity,” “inclusive compassion,” and “decolonisation.” 

Apparently, it’s a “cultural shift which is necessary for the profession.” Because, we’re told, all medical workers – yes, all of them, across the entire country – “participate daily in the perpetuation of structural violence upon those most marginalised amongst us, particularly those who are racialised, and live at the intersections of marginalisation.”

How this “violence,” this all-pervasive downtroddenness, is perpetuated by the receptionist at the local medical centre is, alas, not explained. No examples are offered. Indeed, evidence and logical argument are entirely absent. Given the sweeping nature of the demands, the absence of any kind of realistic and meaningful argument, with actual points of fact that one might address, is a tad curious.

Instead, we get a list of seemingly arbitrary words, among which, “colonisation, slavery, and white supremacy.” Oh, and “settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia…” Needless to say, the list is quite extensive, though not particularly illuminating. Less an explanation as an incantation. Magical words. With which to conjure contrived, pretentious guilt. A kind of modish neuroticism.

We are, however, told that the priorities of physicians, nurses, and medical administrators should be less about “professionalised knowledge,” those drug dosages and such, and more about “lenses of social justice.” These allegedly corrective lenses will “allow physicians to more effectively engage in… social change.” Suitably re-educated, their mentalities rewired, medical workers will have “bidirectional relationships with… the land.”

Which is obviously what you want when that itchy rash won’t go away.

At which point, it’s perhaps worth noting that the Royal College oversees Canada’s medical school education programmes. The institution is tasked with “setting national standards for medical education.”

So, nothing to worry about, then.

Update, via the comments:

Regarding this,

The interim report recommends “de-centring medical expertise” and instead focusing medical school education on the values of “anti-racism,” “anti-oppression,” “social justice and equity,” “inclusive compassion,” and “decolonisation.” 

Svh adds,

None of those things have value.

Well, “anti-racism,” for instance, seems to consist largely of peddling black racial narcissism and anti-white sentiment, along with policies that actually sabotage the life-chances of minority students. Say, by actively championing a failure to learn rudimentary spelling and grammar:

The students are encouraged to be hyper-critical, indeed delusional, regarding the motives of all white people, even to the point of dismissing the correction of spelling and grammar as some egregious, racially motivated act of oppression. And yet the motives of their educators, the ones who tell them these things, and whose status and careers depend on cultivating tribalism and paranoid resentment, and a kind of pernicious flattery, are spared any similar questioning – or, so far as I can see, any questioning at all.

So much for “critical thinking.”

And so, students who leave university saddled with debt and a worthless Angry Studies pseudo-qualification, and who subsequently repel employers with their chippy attitude, inept spelling, and grammatical incompetence, will presumably rationalise any rejection, any hardship, as proof of the evils of “whiteness” and the “racist society” that their lecturers banged on about. Because the more obvious explanation – that they were dupes, taken for a ride by race-hustling parasites – would be much too bruising to their egos.

In light of which, any value seems overwhelmingly negative. Except, of course, for the race-grifting mediocrities who get paid to propagate such things.

The contradictions of “equity” and competence have been noted here before, at some length, with striking illustrations. And while proponents of “equity” are often oddly reluctant to define this rather loaded term, it seems to mean something like equality of outcome regardless of inputs. And as values go, that isn’t entirely endearing. Or a basis for a civilisation.

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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.